Men (on the Internet) don’t believe sexism is a problem in science, even when they see evidence

As a follow-up to recent studies on sexism and harassment in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), researchers studied the Internet's reaction to the evidence those studies provided — and it turned out the way you'd expect, if you've ever been on the Internet.

To see how different genders reacted to evidence of bias in science (on the Internet, anyway), the researchers looked at the comment threads of three articles about studies on the issue, and quantified the responses.

Several scientific studies have shown that a gender gap exists in science, technology, engineering and math fields, with women losing out all the way up and down the pipeline of academia and industry. In 2012, researchers from Yale published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that indicated unconscious gender biases in hiring processes for women in science academia.

When they controlled for all other variables, the researchers found out what was holding these fake women back from their dream jobs: All other things being equal, the academic hiring squads were rating the women as less competent than the men.

A 2014 study in the same journal found male faculty much less likely than female faculty to bring female graduate students into their labs — and the effect was even more pronounced if the male professor had won a prestigious award. Elite labs were overwhelmed by men, with male postdocs 90 percent more likely to be mentored by Nobel laureates than their female peers were.

So the evidence is definitely there, and you'd think that seeing it would make people think about these issues. But the reader feedback on three articles written about studies like these (posted on The New York Times, Discover Magazine, and IFL Science) wasn't pretty, once numbers were crunched:

9.5 percent of the comments argued that sexism does not exist; 68 percent of these commenters were men.

67.4 percent of the comments agreed that gender bias exists; of these 29 percent were men

22 percent of all of the comments justified the existence of gender bias.

Of these comments, between 79 percent and 88 percent were made by men.

7.6 percent of the comments argued that sexism targets men more than women; 65 percent of these commenters were men.

100 percent of the comments expressing gratitude for the study were made by women.

Only .5 percent of the comments mentioned that their minds were changed about gender bias after reading the article; of these 67 percent were made by men.

11.2 percent of the comments expressed a call for social change; of these, 46 percent were made by men.

And there were sexist remarks in the comments, too (of course). Seven percent of all comments contained such statements, with 76.8 percent of them smearing women. The rest, I assume, were just the words "omg ban all men" over and over again.

But one thing proved truly equal: 50 percent of the sexist comments against men were made by men themselves. So I guess we've got a little gender parity going, if only when it comes to misandry.